Why Must the Messiah Die?

Why must the Messiah die?

Despite a few mysterious prophetic texts that seemed to intimate this possibility (e.g. Daniel 9:26), the idea that the Messiah could arrive and subsequently be killed was radically counter-intuitive to most first-century Jews. 

Yet the conviction of the early Christians, based on Jesus of Nazareth’s own teachings about himself, was that the radically counter-intuitive impossibility was actually prophesied, if one had the eyes to see and the ears to hear it in Israel’s Scriptures.

The Readings for today's Mass offer us two of the most poignant prophecies of the suffering of the Messiah.

Isaiah 50:4-7, the First Reading, is part of one of the several enigmatic “servant songs” characteristic of the second part of Isaiah (Isaiah 40-66).  (I follow Benjamin Sommer in seeing Isa 40-66 as a literary unit.  I love his scholarship generally.)  The subject of these “songs” or poems is a mysterious “Servant” of the Lord, who is described variously in the first, second and third person.

Isaiah 50:4-7 is a first-person account of the Servant.  He refers to his persecutions: “I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard.”  Yet he is confident of vindication: “I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame.”

This is the lesser of two passages in Isaiah that speak of the sufferings of the Servant.  The other, more famous and longer, passage is Isaiah 52:13–53:12, which the Church saves for the Good Friday liturgy.

With respect to both passages, we may well take up the query of the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8:34): “About whom does the prophet say this, about himself or about some one else?”

It is a puzzle.  Traditionally the passage has been understood as the writing of Isaiah the prophet of Jerusalem.  Yet we know of no physical persecution of Isaiah like this.  Modern critical scholarship divides Isaiah into at least three different main sections, with different authors and a multitude of anonymous “redactors” or editors.  Isaiah 50 might be attributed to an exilic “deutero-“ or “second Isaiah.”  Yet nothing is known about the personal life or ministry of this hypothetical prophet, aside from speculation based on the text of the oracles themselves.

The common conviction of the followers of Jesus of Nazareth is that these texts speak of Him; moreover, that the prophecies of the Scriptures of Israel only make sense and come into focus when seen in the light of the life, death, and resurrection of this Jesus, who was and is the anointed Servant.

The Responsorial Psalm is perhaps the most dramatic in the psalter, and has always been understood as a prophecy of the passion.

In Christian interpretation, we are used to thinking of the Old Testament as speaking literally (for example, of the “promised land”), but these literal statements receive a figurative fulfillment in the New Testament (the “promised land” = heaven).  In certain instances, however, this pattern is reversed.  Psalm 22 is an example. 

In certain places, the psalmist (David, according to tradition) describes his afflictions in a way that can only be figurative or hyperbolic: “I am poured out like water,” “all my bones are out of joint,” “they have pierced my hands and feet,” “I can count all my bones.”

We know of no instance where any of these things were true literally of David or any other Old Testament figure.  They are emotive overstatements of the psalmist’s suffering.  Yet, they receive a literal fulfillment in Christ.  The literal fulfillment in Christ’s passion is a condescension of God to us.  It is God writing in big letters in order that we get the point.

Another example of condescension is found in today’s Gospel.  Zechariah 9:9 speaks of the Messiah coming to Jerusalem on a “donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.”  By itself this is simply Hebrew poetic parallelism.  Only one animal is meant.  Yet in Matthew’s gospel, we see that Jesus has the disciples procure both a donkey and it’s colt in order for him to ride on.  Jesus’ intention was, in a sense, to overfulfill or fulfill to the letter the prophecy in order to drive the point home to the surrounding crowds.  “That’s strange!  Why does he have two animals? .... Oh,  I get it!”

Back to Psalm 22: this psalm is one of the most complete Todah psalms in the entire psalter.

Todah means “thanks” or “praise,” and the Todah is the “sacrifice of thanksgiving” legislated by Moses in Leviticus 7:11ff.  It was a kind of animal sacrifice not offered in reparation for sin, but out of thanksgiving for some saving act that the LORD had done for the worshipper. 

Excellent work on the Todah and its significance for the psalms has been done by Hartmut Gese, followed by Joseph Ratzinger, and summarized superbly by our own Michael Barber.

The Todah was a festive sacrifice offered as part of a lived cycle of experiences in which you (1) began in a situation of distress, (2) cried out to God, (3) made a vow to offer the Todah if God would save you, (4) God saved you, (5) you paid your vow by offering the Todah sacrifice in the temple, (6) you had a festive party as you and your family and friends ate the meat of the sacrifice and all the bread that was required (see Leviticus 7:11ff), and (7) you gave public testimony to all assembled in the Temple concerning how God saved you. 

Interestingly, the Passover, if categorized according to the genres of sacrifices in Leviticus 1-7, would fall under the category of the Todah sacrifice.

The Todah is significant to the Psalter, because it seems that a large number of Psalms were written for part or all of the Todah cycle described above.

Important Todah psalms include Psalm 116 (my personal favorite), Psalm 50, 56, 100, and several others, including perhaps the most complete, today’s Psalm 22.

Jesus cites Psalm 22 from the cross.  The so-called “Cry of Dereliction,” (“My God, My God ...”) is, of course actually the first line of Psalm 22.

I think Jesus’ cry from the cross is over-read theologically sometimes, as if it indicated that Jesus felt utterly separated from the Father or lost the Beatific Vision. 

I do not contest that Our Lord’s sufferings were extreme, and difficult for us to comprehend, but the Cry of Dereliction is not proof that he lost the Beatific Vision or experienced radical separation from the Father.

The psalms in antiquity were almost certainly not known by their present numberings, because the numbering systems varied according to different editions of the psalter (for example, Qumran’s 1QPalms^a).  The way to refer to a psalm was probably by its first line—a practice similar to the traditional Jewish naming of biblical books by their first words (also done in the Catholic tradition with Papal documents).

So when Jesus cites “My God, My God ...” from the cross in today’s Gospel, he is really making a reference to all of Psalm 22, inviting the bystanders to interpret what is happening to him in light of this psalm.

With that in mind, fast forward to the end of Psalm 22.  How does the Psalm end?  In suffering, or ...?

Then ask yourself the question, “Do you think Jesus knew how the Psalm ended?”

I suspect he did.  Though he was in agony on the cross, he also knew this was the path to triumph (see Mark 8:31;9:31; 10:34; 14:58; 15:29)

So why must the Messiah die?  The proximate explanation is: to fulfill the prophecies.  As the Gospel Reading states:

And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword, and struck the slave of the high priest, and cut off his ear.  Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.  Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?  But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?”

But ultimately that only backs the question up.  Why would God inspire the prophets to predict this?  Why was it in God's plan?

There are many approaches to answer that question.  One of the approaches has to take into account the fact of God's creating a world in which other personal agents are truly free--able to choose evil, able to choose against God and other persons and bring harm to others.  If it were not possible for humans to choose evil, they would not be free: they would be pleasant robots.  Yet, if God created a world in which evil were realizable but he spared himself ever experiencing it, it would give grounds to his opponents to accuse him of permitting others to experience what he would never suffer himself.  But if Christ is the Messiah--in fact, the LORD himself--then we have no distant God who allows suffering only for others, but one who accepts it also himself, and transforms it; redeems it; makes it a way to new life.